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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This article comes from Canada.com - Casey Scheibling, an honors sociology student at Concordia University, is looking at how porn usage impacts the rise in men using pec implants, calf implants, and penile enhancement, all of which are "very aligned with hegemonic or hyper masculinity."

For men who watch porn, it must seem that all men are very well-endowed, can jackhammer a woman for hours without orgasm (no worries that the women often seem to be in pain), and then orgasm like a small geyser. Many of the men, especially in gay porn, look like bodybuilders - highly muscled and very lean. None of these depictions are realistic and must make men (often young men) feel very insecure about their own bodies and performance.

Scheibling's
research will examine the relationship between habitual or chronic porn
consumption and excessive body dissatisfaction, says his adviser Marc
Lafrance, because the men featured in heterosexual porn -- the subject
of the study -- are buff males who perform on demand in a highly
mechanized way.

Photograph by: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

MONTREAL
— There's more to pornography than how it sexualizes or demeans women,
says Casey Scheibling, an honours sociology student at Concordia
University.

"Most of the literature on pornography tends to focus on women, and that leaves out half of the people involved."

How,
he wonders, do the portrayals of men in pornography influence body and
genital satisfaction among male viewers? “I’m not talking about men’s
addiction to pornography,” says Scheibling, 23. “I’m more interested in
the studies on how pornography consumers make sense of their own
masculinity.”

Scheibling’s research will examine the relationship
between habitual or chronic porn consumption and excessive body
dissatisfaction, says his adviser Marc Lafrance, because the men
featured in heterosexual porn — the subject of the study — are buff
males who perform on demand in a highly mechanized way.

“Is this
sort of porn consumption among extraordinary numbers of young men
creating expectations around their own bodies that are difficult to
approximate?”

Part and parcel of the crisis of masculinity is the
kind of collective anxiety men are now suffering about their bodies and
their sexual potency, says Lafrance, who also teaches a master’s level
course titled the Sociology of the Body.

"There's a link to be made between this so-called crisis of masculinity . . . and the extraordinary proliferation of erectile dysfunction
products, the rise of body building and cosmetic surgery, the
high-energy drinks, and let's throw in for the good measure the boom in
grooming products," he says.

"All of these suggest in my view an
increased preoccupation with male bodies in which they’re all trying to
increase the maleness of the male.

"Pec implants, calf implants, penile enhancement — these are very aligned with that hegemonic or hyper masculinity.

"Just
as all those female products speak to women’s insecurity,” Lafrance
says, "these are tapping into a growing anxiety around masculinity and
an alpha male ideal."

Monday, January 30, 2012

This post has received over 270 comments at The Good Men Project. If you want to read Jasmine Peterson’s response (she is a feminist) to this post, it's called Toward Equality (For Everyone): A Response To ‘The End of Feminism (As I Knew It).’
Viglietti argues that feminism (or a good part of it) has "changed from seeking equality to
“world domination” and men-bashing. All of a sudden, for these people, I
wasn’t a friend or an ally anymore: I was an enemy." He acknowledges that not all feminists believe this, but it's gotten to the point where women want men, or it so it seems, to be more like women.

If you say you’re for equality, Valter Viglietti writes, then you’re for everyone’s equality.

I have a confession to make: I have been a feminist for most of my life.

Since when I was a child, watching how my father treated my mother, I
sensed a strong injustice and instinctively sided with women. Even
growing up (it was the 60s and 70s), I noticed how often women were
considered or dealt with as inferior, and that deeply enraged me.

Perhaps I became even too much of a feminist, because for a long time
I thought women were morally superior to men; I didn’t think much of my
own gender.

With time, I became wiser (well, I hope I did). My opinions became
less black and white, and more nuanced. I realized how much both men and
women can be good—or faulty, deceiving, manipulative, and just plain
awful. I noticed that every “typical” gender fault, had an equivalent
fault in the other sex.

I came to think God must be really impartial, because He (She? It?)
made both genders equally “flawed” (at least, we have equality in this).

But I still thought of myself as a feminist, because there has been
so much injustice to remedy, and I wanted to give women my support. I wanted to be their friend and ally. Besides, I really like women.

Then I met The Good Men Project.

What happened then?

I began reading comments (and even some articles) where I was
“charged as guilty” just for the fact of being a man. I was accused of
things I never did. I felt I could not think, feel, or (politely) say
some things, because some women could be offended by them. In short, for
some women I was a “bad man” by default.

And all this was happening on a website meant for men to express themselves.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Most of the jobs that men do almost exclusively are high danger jobs, like mining and oil rigs, and bouncers. I have never seen a female bouncer . . . this is one of the high-risk, low-reward jobs that falls nearly exclusively to men. This documentary looks at the lives of bouncers.

A chronicle of the lives of bouncers – the burly boys who guard both sides of the door in nightclubs across America.

The documentary takes an inside look at the mindset of these frequently ridiculed, but always feared enforcers of the night and examines whether they are skilled experts in security, hired to anticipate trouble, or just hired thugs meant to intimidate.

Revealed within is a world of notorious nightclub bouncers, including New York’s Terence “The Black Prince” Buckley and British legend Lenny “The Guv’nor” McLean who appeared in “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”

Saturday, January 28, 2012

New research identified self-stigma as the primary reason that
men from rural areas do not reach out for help. This research essentially confirms prior knowledge - that men in more traditional communities are "trained" to see asking for help, or even needing help, as a weakness. These beliefs prevent men in these communities (or men who hold these values) from asking for help.

Men,
in general, are far less likely than women to seek professional help
for mental health problems. But a new study, led by Joseph H. Hammer and
David L. Vogel of the Department of Psychology at Iowa State
University, suggests that men from rural communities are even more
resistant than urban-dwelling men when it comes to getting psychological counseling.
The study expands upon previous research by the team and explores the
factors that create barriers to treatment. For example, in the study,
Hammer and colleagues identified self-stigma as the primary reason that
men from rural areas do not reach out for help.

Masculine norms of
success, power, emotional control, and self-reliance are evident
throughout Western cultures. In America, men are taught early on the
significance of these norms. Asking for help and showing emotional
vulnerability is perceived as a sign of weakness and often makes young
boys the target of ridicule by family members or peers. To avoid this
victimization, young boys and teens will resort to internalizing and
will transfer external stigmas regarding counseling to themselves as self-stigmas.

For this most recent study, the researchers interviewed 4,748 men
from both urban and rural communities. They discovered that the men from
rural areas were twice as likely to conform to traditional masculine norms
as their urban peers, which led to concerns about treatment. In
particular, there are fewer clinicians in rural communities, so
confidentiality was of major concern to the men. Also, the targeted
treatment designed to address specific mental health problems could
require travel to another town, resulting in time away from family or
work, threatening self-reliance and role fulfillment.

Although income did not influence men’s motivation to seek help,
education did. In all communities, men with the least amount of
education resisted treatment because of self-stigma more than any other
group. The researchers believe nonconventional treatments, such as
adventure therapy or internet treatment programs, could provide
resources that would appeal to men with strong masculine norms,
particularly those in rural communities. Literature aimed at dispelling
the stigma of treatment, available in doctors’ offices or through
community clinics, could also help these men overcome their resistance.
The researchers added, “Working to build greater trust in the
therapeutic relationship may also reduce the perceived threat of seeking
help to clients’ self-esteem and conﬁdence.”

Friday, January 27, 2012

This interesting article about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was posted at Humanities. They begin the piece with a rundown of great authors who fathers went bust or put their kids, for whatever reason, through serious challenges. It seems sons are so deeply affected by fathers that they can self-destruct (what I see with some clients) and aspire to greatness - perhaps all in different ways an attempt to get the love and validation they always sought but never received.

If you want your child to be a writer, go bankrupt.

The evidence confirms it. Failing that, at least suffer a severe financial reversal, obliging your son or daughter to endure the social opprobrium of changed schools and dropped friendships. Let him know the shame of fallen status, that he might grow ever more attuned to the minutest of slights, real or imagined. Careful scrutiny of his fellows will likely become a habit, a good sense of humor his first line of defense. Imagination will be his refuge. If you want your child to be a writer, do all this, and you may yet join an impecunious fraternity of writers’ parents that includes John Shakespeare, John Joyce, John Clemens, John Dickens, John Ernst Steinbeck, and Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. (Apparently, you might also want to consider changing your name to John.) Not convinced? Throw in Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, Edward Fitzgerald, and Richard Thomas Hammett, too.

Charles J. Shields interviewed Vonnegut a couple of times for his biography, And So It Goes, and found the author still obsessed with ill feelings toward his parents and still angry about his lack of acceptance as a literary figure (from a review of the book):

Shields makes noise early about his subject’s sense of being overlooked, a feeling that went back to his relationship with his parents and his older brother Bernard, a noted physicist who died in 1997. During their final meeting, Vonnegut asked Shields to look up his name in Webster’s Dictionary; when Shields couldn’t find it, he directed him to look up Jack Kerouac. The implication is that Kerouac (or Norman Mailer or Nelson Algren or Truman Capote, all of whom make cameos in these pages) was taken more seriously than Vonnegut, whose early work was ghettoized as science fiction.

Shields persuaded Vonnegut to let him write the book, and he spent hours talking to the Slaughterhouse-Five author during the last year of his life. He says he was surprised during their very first conversation when Vonnegut began by complaining about his parents.

"For all the world, I thought I was talking to a much younger person who still had a real beef with the way he had been raised," Shields says. But that oddly youthful outlook was what endeared Vonnegut to generations of disaffected kids.

With that background, here is a taste of the Humanities article, Unhappy Camper.

The late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., whose most productive decade has just entered the Library of America pantheon with the publication of Novels & Stories 1963–1973, is no less classic a case than the rest.

Born into a prosperous German-American family in 1922 Indianapolis, the son and grandson of architects, his mother a privileged beer heiress soon unstrung by the Depression, Vonnegut was rudely yanked out of private school as the thirties began. “A wise use of resources,” he once ruefully called this step down in the world, still smarting in an interview quoted in Charles J. Shields’s fine, undeluded new Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes.

The hijacking of Vonnegut’s early education embarrassed him not just at the time but down the road, when his career would bring him into contact with writers more well-read than he was. “Who’s Keats?,” he once innocently asked of his writing students at the University of Iowa, and then, mortified at their laughter, fled the room. Two years later, a “Who’s Keats?” banner hung above his thronged, adoring going-away party.

Vonnegut may not have read his Keats, but he found his way early to the models he’d need most: the black humorists Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and H. L. Mencken. Together they form a too often unacknowledged tradition in our letters, that of the Great American Dyspeptic. (Later, Hunter S. Thompson would join their raffish parade.) If he’s lucky, a reader finds them in adolescence, perhaps first as a suspiciously recurrent presence in Bartlett’s Quotations or other bathroom books. Of them, only Twain was a novelist, and therefore the only one likely to stray onto a school syllabus. Twain has also become the one most strongly identified over the years with Vonnegut, and the one likeliest to wind up alongside him on the business end of some bluestocking’s library or curriculum challenges.

All that dubious glory lay far in the future when Vonnegut first embarked on the genre fiction career that ultimately led to Library of America’s first volume of his writing. That nonprofit publisher has collected four consecutive midcareer Vonnegut novels and a miscellany of incidental writing into its customary handsome volume. Hemmed into its 1963–73 rubric, the book includes only a couple of his short stories, preferring to take Vonnegut from 1963’s Cat’s Cradle, perhaps the purest distillation of his novel-length genre work; through the pointed social satire of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; past his breakthrough, Slaughterhouse-Five; to 1973’s Breakfast of Champions, which Vonnegut described as his “fiftieth-birthday present to myself . . . as though I am crossing the spine of a roof—having ascended one slope.”

The downhill slope was gentler, but no breeze. The collection forms a fitting tribute to a beloved novelist who peaked late but fast. One year Vonnegut was still writing paperback originals for not much money. The next he was opining darkly on television about the moon landing with Walter Cronkite and Gloria Steinem. The difference was Slaughterhouse-Five, a book with, depending how you count them, at least two titles and two plots, and without which his other novels might, incredibly, not be in print from anyone, let alone the Library of America.

Vonnegut had been trying to shape the material that became Slaughterhouse-Five for twenty years. Rare for writers—rare for anybody—this most formative experience may have befallen him not as a child, but in young manhood. As a World War II POW, he had narrowly escaped the Allied firebombing of Dresden in an underground slaughterhouse. He emerged the next morning to find the whole city transformed into an abattoir, as if his hole had somehow expanded overnight to swallow what was left of the world. The experience, naturally, haunted him, not least because he must have suspected he had found, early on, by far his most important material.

After mustering out of the army, Vonnegut knocked around a bit, newspapering in Chicago and then flacking for General Electric. Always, he was writing. The arc of Vonnegut’s eventual career proceeds steadily from escapist yet thoughtful science fiction to fragmentary personal history. It’s only at the midpoint, Slaughterhouse-Five, that these two axes, the outlandish and the autobiographical, almost perfectly cross. The novel combines stroboscopic flashbacks to Vonnegut’s war experiences with the science-fiction overlay of a character called Billy Pilgrim who has become, in this seemingly plainspoken writer’s lovely formulation, “unstuck in time.”

Slaughterhouse-Five became a counterculture sensation, joining Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and anticipating his fellow Cornellian Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in their time-scrambled use of the same “good war” to indict the absurdity of any war at all. Lost amid the eminently deserved praise heaped over the years on Slaughterhouse-Five has been Vonnegut’s only other novel-length treatment of the war, the vastly underrated Mother Night. Preceding Slaughterhouse-Five by seven years, Mother Night takes the form of a condemned man’s suicide note, the long jailhouse affidavit of an American spy who rose through the ranks of the Third Reich to become Nazi Germany’s star radio apologist.

This tightly plotted and structured book lacks most of its successor’s capering narrative pyrotechnics, concentrating instead on the story of a pathologically rationalizing man’s divestment, one by one, of all his cherished alibis. At the end, bereft of his sweetly loving marriage, his sense of mission as the deepest of deep-cover moles, he stands exposed as the quintessential hypocrite, the Gorgon who can no longer hide from his own reflection. It’s a mordantly thrilling novel, one whose potential eclipse behind the four newly enshrined by Library of America would be an outright shame.

A few weeks ago a group of European scientists published a study claiming that sex
differences between men and women are much larger than we previously
thought. The study found a very small overlap between men and women for personality traits such as sensitivity and warmth (much stronger for women) and emotional stability and dominance (much stronger for men).

These
results are being used as proof that men and women's brains are
fundamentally different, but what's important what the study doesn't measure.

It doesn't measure differences in brain
structure. It doesn't measure any sort of inherent difference at all.
The differences are based on a survey in which men and women
self-reported answers to a series of personality questions based on the 16PF model.
In other words, the study measures responses that fully-developed
adults give when measuring themselves on traits that are socialized
along a distinct gender binary.

Related Articles

The results can't possibly come as a surprise to anyone who
has ever walked into a toy store, or turned on the television, or, you
know, left their house. Humans are taught literally from birth what is
appropriate behavior for a woman and what is appropriate behavior for a
man, and the fact that fully grown men and women have learned to exhibit
different behaviors isn't exactly groundbreaking news. Little girls are
given dolls and called pretty, little boys are given trucks and called
strong. In fact, in her book Delusions of Gender,
psychologist Cordelia Fine points to a study of how pregnant women
described the movement of their fetuses in the last three months of pregnancy
- male activity was described as vigorous, while female activity was
"not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active."
Gendering, it seems, actually starts in the womb. (For more, the website Sociological Images keeps an exhaustive - and exhausting - list of pointlessly gendered products; see also Riley on Marketing).

We
propose a different interpretation of the study's results. Regardless
of gender, humans are extraordinarily good at internalizing social cues,
and their behavior as adults reflects decades of learning about "how
men are" and "how women are." If we take that fully plausible
interpretation of the study as fact, it's great news for equality
advocates. Overcoming stereotyped
gender binaries is as simple as socializing people from birth to see
personality traits from warmth to liveliness to emotional stability as
human rather than as male or female.

Okay, so maybe that won't
actually be that simple. Our stereotypes run pretty deep. But studies
like this one don't justify these stereotypes; they reinforce them.
That's not science. Let's not make it more complicated than that.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

According to a bunch of nutjob evolutionary psychologists, in a new study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, a review of the "evolutionary evidence" supports the so-called "male warrior hypothesis" as the origin of all human conflict.

Yep, it's that simple. Turn off the male sex drive and there will be no more wars, no more religious disputes, and no more English soccer hooligans (I'd bet cutting off the beer would have more impact on this last one).

Related Articles

The "tribal" attitude of men, ultimately aimed at boosting their chances of reproducing, is similar to the territorial behaviour of chimpanzees, it was claimed.

The study also examined evidence which suggests men have a stronger sense of group identity than women, and that they will develop closer ties with others in their group if they are in competition with rivals.

Although men's hostile responses most likely evolved to combat the threat from outsiders, they "might not be functional in modern times and are often counterproductive," experts said.

Over time this has resulted in full-scale wars between countries and empires, and also in scraps and skirmishes between rival groups of football supporters and urban gangs.

Prof Mark van Vugt, who led the study, said: "A solution to conflict, which is an all too common problem in societies today, remains elusive. One reason for this might be the difficulty we have in changing our mindset, which has evolved over thousands of years.

"Our review of the academic literature suggests that the human mind is shaped in a way that tends to perpetuate conflict with ‘outsiders’."

Prof van Vugt said the research established that conflict with other groups of men presented our ancestors with opportunities to improve their status and gain more access to territory and potential mates.

He added: "We see similar behaviour in chimpanzees. For example, the males continuously monitor the borders of their territory.

"If a female from another group comes along, she may be persuaded to emigrate to his group. When a male strays too far, however, he is likely to be brutally beaten and possibly killed."

Research by Californian scientists in 2008 showed that the evolution of aggression and bravery in men was down to competition for mates and territory.

Their study showed that our genes can have a significant impact on traits like belligerence, meaning that in the course of our history the most aggressive group was singled out by natural selection.

Hunter-gatherer communities engaged in frequent skirmishes with other, neighbouring groups, taking land, goods and women as a reward for victory.

This meant belligerence was rewarded with reproductive success, and the benefits of the trait were genetically passed down to future generations, while those lacking aggression were filtered out.

There are several historical examples linking the male sex drive and conflict, such as Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan who studies suggest has 16 million direct male descendants today as a result of his appetite for women.

Vikings also left a strong genetic fingerprint in areas like the Scottish Western Isles, the Isle of Skye and Iceland because raiding parties would take local wives as a reward for successful raids.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

"The Editors" posted this article the other day at The Good Men Project. They discuss the work of Jim Wysong, author of The Neutering of the American Male, and his belief that the "roles of men and women have become intermingled to the point that it
is difficult to define the difference between sexes, confusion has
continued to increase, resulting in bewilderment and frustration" (from the product description at Amazon.com).

Personally, I think there may be some truth to this, for traditional males, but for those men who have worked to integrate their gender polarities and have embodied a more fluid notion of gender roles, this is not very relevant.

That said, I see this struggle quite often in the men who seek coaching and/or counseling. Especially in counseling, traditional gender roles seem to be losing their relevance. For these men, this does result in confusion and frustration. But to me, the answer is not regression.

I see it as thesis (hyper-masculine men, i.e., traditional masculinity), antithesis (feminized men), and we are now moving toward synthesis (fluidity in gender roles without losing the biological gender identity).

Increasing gender role reversals create stressed men.

In the popular NBC drama “Parenthood,” character Joel Graham
represents a growing number of American men: the stay-at-home dad whose
go-getter wife brings home the bacon.

On the show, Joel is usually content building furniture in the
backyard and hosting play dates for his young daughter. But, every now
and then, his lawyer wife Julia makes a unilateral decision that leaves
him angry and doubting himself.

“Most men are wired to be in charge; it’s part of their DNA,” Wysong
says. “They come into the world with a tendency toward certain masculine
characteristics, for instance, a preference for building blocks over
building relationships.

“Over the past century, gender roles have blurred, leading to some
women developing more masculine qualities by necessity – think World War
II, when they had to take the men’s place in factories – and some men
developing stronger feminine qualities, like sensitivity and compassion.

“The man’s feminine characteristics overdevelop so his psychological
needs can be met by the masculine woman in his life, be it his mother or
his wife.”

While everyone has both masculine and feminine qualities, problems
occur when a person loses balance and is living opposite his or her
core, Wysong says. The incongruence leads to stress, distress and
dissatisfaction. And, increasingly, thanks to the economic tailspin,
some very confused men and women.

In 2010, there were 154,000 “house dads,” a number that’s been
climbing steadily since 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Experts say that what began as a small trend of choice, as wives
outdistanced their husbands in earnings, has become one of economic
necessity in many families. The construction industry, one dominated by
men, has been one of the hardest hit in the economic downturn.

♦◊♦

How can these men tell if their emotional distress stems from psychological neutering? Wysong offers some telltale signs:

If they have lots of friends who are girls, but no
girlfriends. Feminine females will enjoy the company of a man they can
talk to and feel comfortable with, but they won’t be physically
attracted to him if he doesn’t possess a masculine presence. It’s a law
of nature in the same way opposite poles of a magnet attract while like
poles repel.

If they’re more comfortable around women than men. Masculinity tends
to be more confrontational – men will test one another, push each other.
Femininity tends to avoid confrontation. Men who have developed a
stronger feminine side are not comfortable with confrontation and feel
threatened. They feel more supported by and less threatened by women.

If they consistently look to others for approval. While a certain
level of self-confidence is healthy and necessary for both men and
women, masculinity tends to have a self-confidence that’s almost
unwarranted. Masculinity remains self-confident even when they know they
don’t have the answers. When that confidence is muted in men, they
often doubt themselves and seek approval from others.

If you recognize yourself, Wysong says, don’t worry.

“A lot of times people worry there’s something wrong with them; they
worry they’re weird,” he says. “You’re not. There are logical reasons
behind it.”

With self-awareness, it’s possible to make changes to bring your male
and female qualities into balance – even to choose from which to draw
in different situations.

“Masculine and feminine qualities are equally important for both
sexes,” Wysong says. “Problems arise when a person gets stuck living
their life incongruent from their gender core.”

About Jim Wysong: Jim Wysong is a businessman, contractor and
real estate investor who spent more than 30 years observing and studying
psychology and human behavior through workshops, seminars and
textbooks. His efforts to better understand his own emotional discomfort
led to theories that have universal applications in modern society.

Monday, January 23, 2012

In this brief teaching from Tricycle, Jack Kornfield offers some wisdom on approaching life with an open heart. No matter the challenges in our life - and we all have our own collection of challenges - we always remain free to choose to be present and to choose to be willing to love.

[The beautiful image at the top, The Compass of My Heart, is by Beth Surdut and it is for sale.]

Jack Kornfield

You need a reliable compass to set your direction and steer through the
rough waters when you are going through hard times, when you’ve been
betrayed, when you’ve lost your job, when you’ve lost friends or loved
ones, when you’re in conflict with your family, or when you’re going
through illness.

But how can you set your direction when you
can’t see any clear harbor? And how can you navigate through difficult
waters when you’re swamped by overwhelming emotions, when so much of
your awareness is taken over with trying to figure out who’s at fault
and who did what to whom, or creating stories about who’s wrong and
who’s right and why?

When we’re overwhelmed by a difficult
situation, sometimes we know we’re behaving in a way that is only making
matters worse, but we don’t know how to stop.

No matter what
situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our
highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more
than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to
take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest intention in this
moment?” If you can have enough awareness to take this small step, your
heart will give you an answer that will take the conversation in a
different, more positive direction. With simple steps like these, you
can behave in ways that at least will not fuel your difficulties—or
anyone else’s.

Whatever your difficulties—a devastated heart,
financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a
seemingly hopeless illness—you can always remember that you are free in
every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest
intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to
do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to
love.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

This was on NPR a couple of weeks ago - it seems LEGO has introduced some new toys that are aimed at girls, but there are a lot of people who object to this and would prefer to see LEGOs be more gender neutral in thier toys.

Aside from simply promoting archaic sexual and gender stereotypes for girls, the new toys violate the LEGO mission of promoting toys that encourage children's creativity and individuality.

Lego introduced a new lineup of toys earlier
this month meant to appeal to girls. But a petition posted on Change.org
is calling on the toy maker to stop distinguishing between toys for
girls and those for boys. So far, the petition has amassed over 47
thousand signatures. Host Michel Martin speaks with one of the sponsors
of that petition, Bailey Shoemaker Richards.

Here is a little piece of the transcript:

MARTIN: Now, Lego argues that these new toys are the result of four
years of research into how to make its toys more appealing to girls and,
if this is what girls are saying that they want, what's so terrible?

RICHARDS:
Well, I think part of the problem with Lego's marketing is that it's
very market research based. I mean, they've looked at what is going to
sell to girls, so when you market pink princesses and beauty to girls
from the time they're infants, by the time they're in Lego's target
market for this line, which is about five and up, they're going to
associate pink, pretty, you know, this very specific gender role with
what they think they're supposed to be playing with. It's all they've
been marketed their entire lives, so of course, that's what Lego's
marketing research is going to find.

The
problem that we have with that is that it doesn't really mesh with
Lego's core values in their mission statement about wanting to create
innovative products that help kids develop creativity. I mean, this
fails that on all counts.

All they've done is sort of throw in with Barbie and Bratz and that sort of very, very narrow stereotypical type of marketing.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

In this editorial from Comics Alliance, Andrew Wheeler looks at the absence of superhero beefcake in comic books and films. Part of his argument - and I agree - is that comic book superheros might as well be eunuchs. I grew up with Superman, in part, and his total inability to own his attraction to Lois and finally move beyond the chaste longing and subtle flirting.

On the other hand, part of what makes Christopher Nolan's version of the Dark Knight so interesting is that Bruce Wayne has a physicality that he sometimes struggles with - he is a man, even if we do not see too much of his body.

Here is a key passage:

Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're
rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob
hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice
the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless
paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as
visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides.

As a gay man, I want more from my objectification. I can't speak for
straight women, but I suspect they want better as well. [Editor's note:
We do.]

2011 was a good year for superhero beefcake. Not in
comics, of course, but at the movies. And not in terms of quantity, but
in terms of quality. What I'm saying is that Chris Hemsworth took his
shirt off in Thor, and it was great.

All right, Chris Evans took his shirt off as well for his Charles-Atlas-ification in Captain America,
and I understand Ryan Reynolds was briefly featured in his scanties
before having his body replaced with a cantaloupe-skinned wire-frame in Green Lantern.
That was it, though. The bar for superhero beefcake is set pretty low.
And the bar is set low because the source material -- actual superhero
comics -- has never been fertile ground for the shameless sexual
objectification of men.

I know that sounds extraordinary to fans who insist that the men in
superhero comics are objectified just as much as the women, but I speak
as someone who spent his teen years hungry for comics that featured
half-dressed supermen.

As
a hormonal gay adolescent in the pre-internet age I cherished those
very occasional -- and usually incidental -- moments of shirtlessness.
Marc Silvestri's Havok in a torn-up costume as the Goblin Prince? John
Romita Jr.'s Matt Murdock in tighty whities? Alan Davis's Captain
Britain in drawstring pajama pants? Joe Mad's Banshee flashing his abs
as he pulls on a sweatshirt? Any comic set in the Savage Land? These
were my sacred texts. (And yes, I was a Marvel kid.)

Straight boys never have to hunt for that sort of fan service. The whole
industry caters to their libidos. Gay boys and straight girls do not
enjoy the same level of pandering. Sure, the men in these comics are
usually buff and handsome, and they're all dressed in skin-tight clothes
and they all have six-pack abs. If you enjoy looking at athletic,
attractive men, you will find athletic, attractive men in these books,
especially when drawn by artists like Chris Sprouse, Dale Eaglesham,
Nicola Scott and Olivier Coipel.

But it's not equivalent. Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're
rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob
hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice
the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless
paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as
visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides.

As a gay man, I want more from my objectification. I can't speak for
straight women, but I suspect they want better as well. [Editor's note:
We do.] There's a popular perception that women aren't as shallow about
appearance as men, and maybe that's true, but they're more than capable
of being just shallow enough. Many women of my acquaintance prefer the
pale, skinny men of BBC costume drama rather than the Hollywood jocks I
like, but whether you want Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hiddleston, Paul
Walker or Paul Bettany, Colin Farrell or Colin Firth, we all like to
look.

Our culture is slowly shifting towards equal opportunity ogling. TV is
leading the way both with shows that load their casts with obvious
hunks, like Glee, Hawaii 5-0 and The Vampire Diaries,
and with shows that shamelessly pander to a man-fancying audience with
previously unimagined acres of muscled male flesh, like True Blood, Spartacus, and MTV's Teen Wolf.

Movies are catching up as well. The scene in 2006's Casino Royale
when Daniel Craig stepped out of the water in tiny square-cut shorts
was a watershed moment that opened the door to Taylor Lautner's abs in Twilight: New Moon, Ryan Gosling's abs in Crazy Stupid Love,
and Ryan Reynolds's abs in... every movie he makes. Marvel Studios has
been smartly on-message in casting leads in its man-friendly movies that
might appeal to the oft-neglected other major demographic.

Yet while Marvel Studios is moving in the right direction, actual
superhero comics are about as backward as it gets. The see-saw is so
tilted towards the exploitation of women that when Wonder Woman put on a
pair of trousers there was an outcry, whereas no-one blinked when Namor
swapped his swimming trunks for long trousers and a shirt, and Namor is
not a character who is coy about his sexuality.

Male superheroes are not written sexy, they're rarely drawn sexy, and
they do not dress sexy. While maybe half of all female characters belong
on a skin-baring scale from Star Sapphire to Wonder Woman, most male
characters fit on a scale from Superman to Spider-Man. Batman has about
as much skin showing on his chin as Power Girl shows on her boobs.

There are exceptions. Hercules, Hawkman and Grunge stand apart as heroes
happy to flash the flesh, and they each have their fans. The other most
scantily clad guys are monsters like the Hulk and the Thing, and even
the Thing now wears a leotard, while no-one thinks the Hulk wears
cut-offs to bring the girls to the yard. (If Hulk were drawn to be
attractive, the way She-Hulk is, he'd look less like a sack of angry
walnuts and more like a green Randy Orton.)

Most male heroes actually wear considerably more than wrestlers. They
wear more clothes than gymnasts, rugby players or soccer players.
Because so many heroes wear gloves and masks, they're even overdressed
compared to most soldiers. A thousand justifications are given for
female characters to wear as little as they do, from "she's a ninja who
needs unrestricted movement" to "she's an alien who isn't hung up on our
repressed human notions about sexuality," yet male characters never
benefit from the same excuses.

For example, why does Aquaman wear a shirt? Why does Thor wear armor?
Why does Gambit wear high collars and metal boots when he would look
better and be more in character in an open-neck shirt and long leather
riding boots? Why did Superboy trade in the tight black t-shirt for Tron
cosplay? And Northstar must have some idea what looks good on a guy, so
why does he dress like a Christmas elf in a nunnery? I can't think of
any gay man with arms like that who keeps them covered up.

Then there's the definitive example; Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy (let's
please not call him Protector). He was meant to be a young, dumb, sexy
character, especially as drawn with a J.G. Jones pout. He was a boyband
babe who wore tight shorts and short sleeves, but now that vision of the
character has been traded in for a guy in the standard spandex burqa of
the superman.

Despite the convention for square-jawed heroes with broad shoulders and
perfect abs, superhero comics are not courting the half of the world
that likes a pretty guy. The industry has the talent -- especially with
an increasing number of straight women and gay men at the drawing boards
-- but it doesn't have the will to pander to that audience. Comics lag
behind other media because the dominant genre remains devoted to one
demographic, while the rest of our culture increasingly wants to appeal
to everyone.

In 2012 the best superhero beefcake will probably still come from the movies.

Friday, January 20, 2012

This is a cool TEDx Talk on letting go of the self-imposed limitations that keep us from pushing ourselves deeper into the experiences that move us, that make our body, mind, and soul resonate with joy and freedom.

Beatboxer Nate Ball is on a constant quest to push the limits of his body to create new sounds. It's all about letting go of embarrassment and doubt. He wants to know what moves you and what you need to let go of to keep moving.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Peer-reviewed by my neurons posted a research summary that shows that changing one stereotype can also alter related stereotypes. The blogger mentions briefly how this might relate to gender issues, but it seems worthy of a little more thought.

In terms of the political reality, Eric Horow (he's the blogger) notes that this knowledge can be used to enforce party allegiance because any movement away from the stereotype of the party (the GOP favors small government, for example) can be used to weaken the party's identity. This is good for voters but bad for the political parties. [I'm not convinced this is true - Bush II created a massive government without seriously damaging his party's image.]

However, with gender issues, this can only be a good thing. Every time we see a male who is sensitive and strong, caring and directed, gentle and powerful, the old stereotypes of one-dimensional masculinity get broken down. These stereotypes are limiting and destructive, so the more we can change them, the better for all of us (and for women as well).

This is definitely one case where we can be the change we want to see in the world.

Stereotypes tend to be bad, and therefore
understanding what causes them is worthwhile. Research shows that a
variety of information about a particular group or its members can
change a stereotype, but that’s not the only thing. A new study finds
the stereotypes of two groups can become interdependent and therefore
one grou’s stereotype could change based on information about a different group.

More specifically, when there are two mutually exclusive groups (e.g.
men and women) with different stereotypes (e.g. men are dirtier, women
are cleaner) information that is incongruent with the competent group’s
stereotype (e.g. Sara and Stacy are messy) can alter the stereotype of
the other group (Men aren’t that dirty). This is not a good
thing for society. When a reputation is based on something irrelevant,
suboptimal decisions are bound to be made.

I also can’t help but think this is a bad sign for the U.S political
system. According to reasoning laid out in the study, when a Republican
is shown to support government spending it would not only weaken the
stereotype of Republicans as fiscal conservatives, it would also lessen
the stereotype of Democrats as big spenders. The depressing takeaway is
that enforcing party discipline is even more important because any
deviation will harm your reputation and improve the reputation
of your opponent. It’s yet another reason that we’re bound to arrive at
an equilibrium in which both parties voluntarily censor themselves.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————-Maris, S., & Hoorens, V. (2012). The ISI change phenomenon: When contradicting one stereotype changes another Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.01.001

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

In the ongoing new (and annoying) fad of Shit ___________ Say, here is a funny one of Shit New Age Guys Say. Most of you have probably seen this already, but I have been busy lately, so it's new to me.

Sadly, some of this is stuff I have heard guys say. Hell, I've said a couple of those things. So please pardon me while I go flog myself.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Yesterday's Bookforum offered up a collection of links on issues related to gender - it's a pretty eclectic mixture of material, sure to please and/or piss off most anyone. Contrary to my usual practice, I've broken these links down into discrete entries for your browsing pleasure.

When we make decisions we think we’re in control. But are we? Dan Ariely has written many books on decision making, but this one struck a chord with Kent and I. Because not only did it talk about the decisions we make on a day to day basis and how predictably irrational we are, but we saw it as a perfect carryover to parenting.

Who is more predictably irrational than children and we as parents can easily and quickly be sucked down into that vortex. Sometimes parenting resources come in different shapes and sizes and books. Check out this one as Kent and I break down some of the chapters that related directly to what we as Dads have to do every day: Parent.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

This looks like a worthy program especially for inner city kids - but I would love to see programs like this in the Tucson barrio, or in the rural south, or anywhere else where men believe that it's okay to hit women, rape women, or otherwise treat women as objects.

One of the important points is that the male teachers who lead these groups act as father figures for the boys who do not have fathers - I think alone can change how these boys grow up.

The federal government estimates that one in five women will be raped in their lifetime — and a group of young men in city schools are hoping to change that.

They’re part of the an afterschool program called Men of Strength (MOST) that teaches boys they should be allies for girls and that violence is inexcusable.

Cherno Barry, an eighth grader at Junior High School 217 in Briarwood, Queens, said the club has taught him to treat all girls like he treats his mother.

“No one is beneath another person,” he said.

Neil Irvin, the executive director of Men Can Stop Rape, the Washington based organization behind the program, said the boys who take part can become protectors in their communities.

“We discuss how traditional masculinity contributes to sexual assault and other forms of men's violence against women,” he said.

There are MOST clubs in three city schools and others scattered across the nation.

Once a week, the kids and group leaders talk frankly about what it means to get a woman’s consent, sexual health and responsibility.

Parents are also involved.

“It’s an education for them too,” said Irwin. “They start to realize that they’ve passed these stereotypes onto the next generation without meaning to.”

Stephen Bradshaw a teacher and club facilitator at JHS 217, said he’s seen first-hand how the program opens eyes among his 27 members.

“The club gives kids a chance to check in with each other talk about the issues that concern them,” he said. And he can serve as a father figure for those who don’t have a male rodel model in their life.

Barry said Bradshaw created “an atmosphere of real brotherhood” and showed him being a man goes beyond the stereotypes in popular culture.

“Fighting in the school yard to prove we are not punks, video games, rap songs -- this is not the way to prove manhood,” he said.

Organizers say many of the boys stick with the program through high school. “They want more time,” laughed Bradshaw, who is paid by Irvin’s group and the school.

With a fun use (to me, at least) of animal themes, the first JOT in this series -- "Pet the Lizard" -- was about how to soothe the most ancient structures of the brain, the ones that manage the first emotion of all: fear. The next one -- "Feed the Mouse" -- addressed how to help early mammalian neural systems feel rewarded and fulfilled. The third one -- "Hug the Monkey" -- was about weaving the sense of being included and loved into the primate cerebral cortex.

Of course, these three practices go way beyond their anatomical roots. The three primary motivational systems of your brain -- avoiding harms, approaching rewards and attaching to "us" -- draw on many neural networks to accomplish their goals. In fact, one motivational system can tap the two other ones; for example, you could express attachment to a friend by helping her avoid harm and approach rewards.

Lately, I've started to realize that a fourth fundamental human motivational system is developing out of the other three.

Whether it's our hunter-gatherer ancestors depending upon their habitats for food and shelter, or modern folks making use of the settings of home and work, or the nearly 7 billion members of the human race pressing hard up against the limits of "Lifeboat Earth" -- to survive and flourish, cultural evolution alone and perhaps biological evolution as well are calling us to love the world.

The world is near to hand in the matter/energy, nature and human-made objects all around you. And then in widening circles, the world extends out to include society and culture, the planet itself and ultimately the entire and still often mysterious universe.

When you love the world, you both appreciate and care for it. Each of these actions makes you feel good, plus they help you preserve and improve everything you depend on for air and food, livelihood, security, pleasure and community.

During the last several million years of human evolution, our emerging species had neither much capacity for harm nor much understanding of the effects it did have upon the world.

But now, humanity has great power for good and ill, as well as undeniable knowledge of its impact on both the natural and built world. As the planet heats up and resources decline... and as a species -- us -- that evolved in part through being lethally aggressive toward its own kind must now live cooperatively and peacefully if it is to live at all. It is critically important that a fourth major motivation guide our thoughts, words and above all, deeds:

Love the world.

How? In terms of the aspect of love that is about appreciating, routinely look for opportunities to enjoy, value and feel grateful for little things in your environment.

These range from whatever is close by -- soft pillow cases, flowers blooming, traffic laws, sun rising, libraries, tree shade, shared language -- to the increasingly vast nested nests we all share: the Internet, global institutions, oxygen/CO2 exchanges through which animals and plants give breath to each other, the incredibly rare and fortuitous occurrence of a rocky planet -- Earth -- surviving the early formation of a solar system to find an orbit that allows for liquid water on its surface... all the way out to this universe which bubbled out of nothing: the largest nest of all, the extraordinary miracle in which we make our ordinary days.

In terms of the aspect of love that is about caring for, this means to me a combination of cherishing, protecting and nurturing the world. You naturally cherish what you love. Cherishing something, you want to keep it safe; once it's protected, you want to help it flourish. (As an aside, it's interesting that these three inclinations map to the three underlying motivational systems: the attaching system cherishes, the avoiding system protects and the approaching system nurtures. As with other aspects of evolution, new capabilities and functions draw on preceding, "lower" systems.)

So much could be written -- and has -- about cherishing our world and protecting and nurturing it, yet I must be brief here, with just three suggestions.

For a minute, an hour, or a whole week, touch natural and human-made things around you like you truly cherish them. If you cherished an orange or a cup, how would you hold it?

Protect something from harm. You could save something you might otherwise throw away, from water running in a sink to food in a restaurant. Security is a wholesome aim of the avoiding system, which is achieved in large part by conserving what we've got.

Pick one thing and focus on helping it grow and thrive. Perhaps a plant, or a business, or a project at a local school, or a collaboration among some friends, or a fix-it repair at home.

At the heart of it, I experience this practice as a matter of our relationship with the world. Do we relate to it as an adversary or distant acquaintance?